March 25, 2002	Monday	Muharram 10, 1423

AL QUDS, March 24: A senior United Nations relief official accused Israel on Sunday of targeting UN facilities during recent military incursions into Palestinian refugee camps.

Peter Hansen also said that despite repeated complaints, Israel had not explained or apologised for assaults that caused nearly four million dollars in damage to UN installations, smashed dozens of refugee homes and traumatised thousands of refugees.

Hansen said Israeli forces had deliberately gone against UN facilities, turning UN school rooftops into snipers positions and using their yards as tank bases or temporary detention centres to interrogate suspects. Soldiers had also fired at other facilities, including service centres, and ambulances.

“Incursions were often directed very deliberately against UNRWA installations,” Hansen, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told Reuters in an interview.

He said the Palestinian Authority and local committees composed of camp notables had prevented “irregular” Palestinian gunmen from using UNRWA’s facilities.

Israel denied targeting UN facilities and said its operations were aimed at armed Palestinian militants involved in attacks on its citizens and their infrastructure.

“Our main struggle to stop Palestinian terrorist action against innocent Israelis. Where the Palestinian Authority does not fulfil commitments, we are obliged to do that within our right to self-defence,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Yafa Ben Ari told Reuters when asked about Hansen’s remarks.

Hansen said his field visits to refugee camps, UNRWA clinics and hospitals gave him a different picture.

“Armed activists who were there obviously slipped away before the Israelis moved in. So the exercise of force was mainly vis-a-vis the civilian population and it was unfortunately quite indiscriminate.

‘MANY WOMEN, CHILDREN WOUNDED’: “The firepower from helicopters, in the nature of things, is not very precisely targeted. In the hospitals and clinics I had a chance to witness the nature of wounds, multiple wounds and there were many women and children who were wounded,” he added.

UNRWA, set up to care for Palestinians displaced by Israel’s founding in 1948, has said that 22 schools, four clinics, two ambulances and four service centres were damaged by Israeli incursions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in March.

An UNRWA guard was among more than 100 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops during the incursions.

Hansen said the incursions cost UNRWA $3.8 million in damage, not counting the costs to 141 refugee homes destroyed during the Israeli army operations.

“We are going to send them (Israelis) a very itemised bill down to the last window that was broken, the walls that were bulldozed and the gates that were blown open.”

High unemployment and a severe economic recession in the Palestinian territories, blamed on army roadblocks ringing the West Bank and Gaza, have also made UNRWA’s task more difficult.

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